“50 years ago when we were beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge and attempting to march from Selma to…”

“50 years ago when we were beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge and attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, there were officers of the law wearing the Confederate battle flag on their helmets.
“When the Klan marched through our neighborhoods in Alabama, in Georgia, in South Carolina; when countless homes in Birmingham were bombed and burned; when they set fire to black churches throughout the South, the Confederate battle flags were a symbol of their cruelty and injustice.
“There is no way—no way the federal government should ever display this flag on any federal site or sell it on federal property. It is a symbol of division, a symbol of separation, it is a symbol of hate. It is a relic of our dark past.”

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Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), speaking on the bill to remove the #ConfederateFlag from federal property.